The winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Award, multiple Carnegie Medals, and the Order of New Zealand—her country's highest civilian commendation—picture book and young adult author Margaret Mahy offers this tale for readers 9 to 13, set in a post-apocalyptic future. Twelve-year-old Garland Maddigan has grown up in her family's traveling circus troop Maddigan's Fantasia, which leaves the city of Solis once a year to perform and earn a living. This year they also have a mission: to bring back a new solar converter for the struggling city. Then Timon and Eden appear—two boys from an even farther future, in which the mission failed and the evil Nennog came to power—to help the Fantasia succeed.